The Burrow

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXMoBTB5WEQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&]

Thanks to a combination of events (taxi service for the short one to have his head checked on Wednesday[1]) and being short on heads, particularly team heal for Friday & Saturday I’m going to be raiding on Unferth this week.  So Team Heal, you’ve got the epic tree with you for another week, maybe a Putri kill will be his swan song.

So… Guys… (and girls)

Learn to dodge the bloody flubber.

[1] We should hear soon if there is a brain inside the head, I’m betting on “no”

Lord Jaraxxus is the second boss in TotC, one of the demon lords he’s a bit of a pain but on balance a simpler fight than the beasts.

The keys to the fight are target switching (adds must be nuked down quickly), situational awareness to get out of the bad and targetted healing. Ranged (inc healers) need to spread around the boss, Fel lightning can chain to keep a reasonable distance between each other, the fireball should be interrupted (DKs I’m looking at you).

Every 60 seconds, Jaraxxus alternately spawns a Nether Portal or a Fel Volcano. Nether Portals spawn a Mistress of Pain, while Volcanoes spawn 3 Felflame Infernals. Both types of adds must be tanked and nuked down by ranged as fast as possible. Melee should stay on the boss.  So ranged, save your damage cooldowns for the adds.

Jaraxxus will randomly cast Incinerate Flesh on one raid member. This debuff absorbs all healing on that target until a certain amount of healing has been done, if the debuff wears off, the target blows up, causing a Burning Inferno to hit the entire raid for large amounts of damage over time, this can be a wipe (it’s a insta-wipe for heroic mode).

Legion Flames is the other nasty, if a member gets this cast on them they should run outside of the raid and then run around.  As the debuff ticks down it will drop green flame on the ground, so while running a line of green fire is left behind the target.  Therefore it is essential to be careful with the path to avoid running through the healers or ranged dps.  The Nether Power debuff will need dispelling by the priest to reduce his dps.

So, hit the boss, hit the adds, get out of green, heal the bad debuff, dispell the other debuff, win, loot, /cheer.

Then… faction champions…

[Edit: Legion flames updated]

A short series of articles covering totc10 ready for the AB weekly raid quest this weekend.

Beasts is a three phase fight

• Gormok the Impaler
• The twin worms
• Icehowl

Gormok
This fight is about tank swapping and heavy healing and quick target switching by the DPS. Gormok casts “impale” on the current main tank, this is a stacking debuff, in 10 man the switch is generally done at two stacks, with the taunt back coming as soon as the stack expires. Depending on the gear level the tanks may need to pop indestructable pots and mitigation cooldowns (divine shield, barkskin etc) at crucial points.

Melee will pound on the boss.

During the fight Snobolds will jump from the boss and leap on someone’s back. Ranged will nuke these down as quickly as possible, doubly so if they’re on a healer. Once the boss drops any remaining snobolds need nuking by all dps quickly before the worms spawn. Hand of Protection can be useful at this point as well to clear any remaining debuff stacks on the last tank.

During the fight fire will be thrown out under the ranged camp, so spread out and strafe if it’s on you.  There should be no fire in melee.

Worm club
Acidmaw & Dreadscale. The worms cycle through mobile and static phases. Their abilities vary depending on whether they’re mobile or not.

Mobile worm: Will always drop a slime pool, the tank will be kiting the mobile boss around the edge of the room, all dps need to be behind the boss as both will do an aoe / cone spray to all targets in front of them (this should only be the tank).

Static:
Dreadscale – fire spit (ranged stay spread), whirlwind like attack (melee impact), burning spray (causing Burning Bile)
Acidmaw – acid spit (ranged single target attack) whirlwind like attack (melee impact), Paralytic spray (causing Paralytic Toxin)

Acidmaw is static first, spawning on the left hand side of the doors as we face them, dreadscale comes through them and moves to the right. DPS will focus all damage on Acidmaw until it’s dead and then move to dreadscale.

At the mobile/static switch both will burrow, the tanks will pick up the same boss as before (ie stay with dreadscale) and change their tanking style in accordance with the phase the boss is now in.

Things to watch for.

Those with burning bile need to get out of melee as it does a aoe damage effect on all those near. If someone is hit with Paralytic Toxin someone with burning bile needs to get as near to them as possible to clear it. Non-tanks with toxin should head for the center of the ring. If a tank is affected someone needs to clear them as quickly as possible, healing needs to be prioritised on them first.

When dealing with a mobile worm look out for green slime on the floor, get out of it. Do not get in front of the boss.

Once the first worm is down the second will enrage doing more damage, so lots of pewpew.

Icehowl…
The final boss is the giant yeti (skinners sharpen those knives) Icehowl. This is mostly a tank and spank fight, stay spread as he does a breath attack freezing players and causing a lot of damage. At various points he’ll move to the center and perform a massive crash sending all players flying to the edge of the ring. Someone will be targetted, this player (and all those near) need to strafe away as quickly as possible, to avoid his charge. If successful he’ll stun himself on the wall (more pewpew time), however if unsuccessful he’ll do a mini-enrage, hunters with tranq shot are useful here.

Repeat until dead, loot, skin.

What is Korenwolf going to be doing when he’s not mashing down bosses?

• Diplomat
• Cenarian rep the title
• Loremaster (120 or so to go)
• More gold!

The transfer between teams in the raiding guild has come through.  So Unferth gets benched from raiding and Korenwolf steps up to the plate to start tanking ICC25 content.  This isn’t because I don’t like healing.  Trees rock, the ability to run while healing large numbers of players for daft amounts of damage makes them possibly the most flexible healing class out there at the moment.

However.

I am fundamentally a control freak, and the place control freaks belong is going toe to toe with the boss.  It’s what we do.

Korenwolf (tankadin) has been prot pretty much since he could start shoving talent points in the tree, he and his soulmate and permanent offsider (a certain Holyadin) levelled together through the latter part of classic and all the way through BC and Wrath.  There is little which can stand in the way of the Paladin tag team, I round them up and keep their attention and she heals the hell out of me and whacks them to act as a mana pinata.  Between them they’ve hit all the 5-man content in Wrath, though with the gearing level it’s no longer team tincan, more like a wreckingball and the wrath 10man content is gradually falling to Team AB (as covered elsewhere on the blog).

I’m expecting higher repair bills (front and center taking melee all the time, it comes with the job), a degree of higher stress / pulse rate during pulls and putting the situational awareness I’ve developed back into proper use.  Not to say that tree healing with tank like awareness for “the bad” is not a good thing, completely the opposite.

So in short less healing news, more tanking news.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/21/photographer-films-anti-terror-arrest

The message being, we don’t like you photographing things, we think you are a terrorist and we’ll demand information we have no right to and hold you in a cell for eight hours if you actually know your rights.

Here’s another which I missed at the time, dear gods, photographing a major landmark which gets photographed many times a day is a reason for a stop and search.

If there is one reason to vote against the main parties this is it, nuLab built up this mentality within the police and PCSOs and the Tories aren’t making any firm promises to deal with the problem.  They like the population to be that little bit afraid of the police, it makes us easier to deal with.  If you’re wary of taking photos just how likely is it you’ll go on a demo?

This is a worrying story, the short version is the school provided laptops for their students and installed various security / monitoring software.  Some of which I consider to be reasonable, though if you provide a laptop to a teen male and expect them not to go hunting on the net for stuff they shouldn’t be looking at then you’re in for a rough ride and providing that the monitoring of usage is clearly and loudly stated before the laptop is accepted with reminders on login then it’s clear and apparent that activity on the machine is not secure and not private.

Educating the students (minors one and all) on how to protect their privacy would be a good thing here, I wouldn’t necessarily trust my bank / utility / social networking passwords to a machine I consider to be little better than a keylogger but providing the information is in the open then the ground rules for the freely provided machine are understood.

However they appear to have put software on to enable the remote use of the webcam (and possibly the mic), it appears that they have been performing some proactive monitoring of the students.  Which has lead to one student being hauled up in front of the principle for “improper behaviour”.

So let’s summarise what is in the reports at the moment

• Laptops provided free (or at low cost)
• Laptops have traffic monitoring
• Laptops have webcam monitoring (doesn’t appear that this was advertised to the students)
• No reports from the school that the improper behaviour was related to the use of the laptop
• “Proactive” monitoring using the webcams
• Private activity in a private house is punished (no hint that the behaviour was illegal) at school

So in short, what the flying fuck were they thinking.  This is so close to 1984’s telescreens that we should all be worried, that there are people out there who think this is “right” or “normal” is terrifying.  Even if the activity was illegal this does not legitimise the monitoring of private individuals within their homes, if this stands does anyone seriously think it’ll end there.

Get the kids used to the monitoring, they’ll accept it as adults and accept it for their kids.

Remember, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

If someone gives you a “free” laptop, make sure you cover the webcam with black tape.

• Guardian
• Bigbrotherwatch
• Boingboing
• AP

… actually it’s going nowhere.

So, firstly Blizz please stop redefining time such that “instant cast wild growth” means “five minutes from cast to spell”.  The 10 minutes stuck at the loading screen for ICC25 was fun, particularly listening to the fight going on without me.

Finally, work out what you’ve broken with the battlegroup database and fix the damm thing, it’s not only broken it’s been taken down the tip, shipped off, recycled and reused as cuddly toys

Don’t get me wrong, Wrath is excellent, the changes which have been announced for 3.3.3… neat, I can finally clear some of the pile of orbs, however.

Before you roll this out on the servers, please fix the fucking lag, being able to run from the monkeys at fraggle rock up to the refuge while still in combat with an invisible mob, while still trying to loot the first kill with no damage showing, then to drop dead… it sucks, it sucks harder than an electrolux.